Responses toWhat is the point, Chyuan Cherng?

I. From Dr. Liu

What's the point? That's a good question but it can be applied to so many businesses in Taiwan, or for that matter, in Japan and Korea. What's the point of Wei-Chuan, Ta-Tung or Din Tai Fung?  Or Chosun Ilbo and Asahi Shinbun? I guess what sets you off is the Wade-Giles spelling. Look at the bright side, the owner does not use Chinese pinyin Quan Cheng which I hope would piss you off even more. And the Wade-Giles spelling is not that hard for a English speaker to pronounce, notwithstanding such unconventional strings like rng in cherng. After all, it was created by a British diplomat.

Yes, it is a KMT-sanctioned Romanization system for the Chinese language and nothing would please me more than seeing Mandarin disappear completely from the tongues of Taiwan residents so we don't have to deal with this nettlesome issue of pinyin vs W-G vs ROC Standard on street signs, place names etc. Given the current reality, I happen to believe that Wade-Giles is the weapon we have on hand to fend off the encroachment of the even harder to pronounce and more ridiculous Chinese pinyin spellings, although I take a perverted joy in pronouncing Taipei's ZhongXiao-Fuxing subway station as Zhong Shit-Fucksing.  

In your ideal world of making English a part of Taiwanese, the pharmacy would have a name like Wholesome or Comprehensive. Let's pray that day would come sooner.


II. From Roxie


I take a bus to school everyday, and the government made up an weird English name for each stop.  For example, a stop called 菸廠 is translated into Ian Factory, and another stop called 永豐螺絲 became Yong Feng Rosie.  I guess they just wanted to give them English names because using English sounds cool, it really doesn't help foreigners.

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In the case of 全成藥局, if its English name is to serve real purpose, I suggest the word Drug be made bigger, instead of Chyuan.  That way, a passersby who could not read Chinese, but could English, can hopefully pick out the useful word Drug.

Roxie's story offers excellent examples of inconsistencies.

菸廠 is translated into Ian Factory

Why not Tobacco Factory, helping natives learn English, at the same time enlightening foreigners?  Is Ian useful to anyone?

永豐螺絲 became Yong Feng Rosie

Again,  Rosie for 螺絲 does not help anyone.

When I take city bus 51 into 太平, one of the stops is 太平橋前, for which the announcer would read "Next stop Taiping Chiau Chen".   This is stupid, but not dangerous.

More serious is what I feel is a secret agenda to turn our names into disgusting Chinese names, such as

Xitun Rd. Intersection 西屯路口
YingCai PostOffice 英才
Xiabuzi 下部仔
...

See
http://citybus.tccg.gov.tw/pda/aspx/businfomation/roadname_roadline.aspx?ChoiceRoute=FengyuanBus&line=51&lang=ENG&goback=1&route=51